Reviews

Review: In Dirty Laundry, A Daughter Airs Her Father’s Infidelity

Mathilde Dratwa’s drama makes its world premiere at WP Theater.

Zachary Stewart

Zachary Stewart

| Off-Broadway |

October 7, 2024

Lakisha May, Sasha Diamond, Mary Bacon, Richard Masur, and Amy Jo Jackson appear in Mathilde Dratwa’s Dirty Laundry, directed by Rebecca Martínez , at WP Theater.
(© Valerie Terranova)

Dad has never washed his own laundry. He went from his childhood home, where his mother did it, to his marital home, where his wife of 45 years did it. But now she’s dead and he’s calling his daughter at 11pm to ask her how to turn on the machine. He’s a doctor, by the way — the most qualified kind of incompetent.

By opening Dirty Laundry with this instance of weaponized incompetence, Mathilde Dratwa seems to suggest what kind of play we’re about to see. Men….amirite?  And yet, in this co-production from WP Theater and Spark Theatrical, there’s plenty of nuance, doubt, and empathy to go around.

A muted frown in an off-the rack blazer, Richard Masur delivers a performance that makes Dad impossible to hate. We quickly suspect that his incompetence is not so much intentionally weaponized as genuine. He’s still reeling from the loss of his wife, and we cannot at first comprehend the rough treatment he receives from his daughter, who is referred to in the program as “Me” (ferociously played by Lakisha May). Sure, it’s annoying that dad doesn’t know that he needs to separate his whites from his darks, but is this really a reason to bite his head off?

Richard Masur, Lakisha May, and Amy Jo Jackson appear in the world premiere of Mathilde Dratwa’s Dirty Laundry.
(© Valerie Terranova)

Of course, we soon discover that the daughter’s anger is related to the affair Dad has been having with Another Woman (Constance Shulman), a nurse at his hospital. It started years ago and continued while Mom was dying of cancer. How could he betray his wife … after all that laundry? And how could he not see that “Me” is the main character and every decision anyone makes must be made with her comfort and approval in mind?

Dratwa comments on her unhappy story through not one, but three narrators (Mary Bacon, Sasha Diamond, and Amy Jo Jackson). They provide context (Bacon offers a lucid explanation of peritoneal dialysis), execute live sound cues (Jackson hauntingly intones Mom’s dying breaths), and express the thoughts one really wants to say out loud, but really shouldn’t: Diamond does this spectacularly through an alternative eulogy, which she delivers concurrently with May, their words coming together and separating like two socks weathering the tempest in a Whirlpool washing machine.

Director Rebecca Martínez sands the rough edges of Dratwa’s story theater with simple yet effective staging techniques. We don’t bat an eye when both the daughter’s husband and an unnamed doctor are presented as empty coats hanging from an IV drip. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it gets the job done. And while it’s never quite clear why there are three narrators, the three excellent actors more than make up for this redundancy.

Sasha Diamond, Amy Jo Jackson, and Constance Shulman appear in Dirty Laundry off-Broadway.
(© Valerie Terranova)

Raul Abrego’s set offers levels and nooks for a variety of scenes while keeping us in a corporeal mindset with a large colorful chart of the lungs hanging upstage. Cat Tate Starmer’s lighting facilitates frequent changes in time and location. Costume designer Lux Haac has obviously taken a lot of time considering this most intimate of design elements, which literally touches the bodies of characters and remains when those characters are no more. This is not so much a play about the dead, but how the living keep going.

Dirty Laundry most benefits from a top-shelf cast. Shulman, in particular, leaves us with no doubt about what dad sees in this other woman — that their companionship is mutually beneficial, a small sliver of joy in a dour world. Who are we to deny anyone that?

In an ambitious and somewhat rambling coda, Dratwa leaves us with a clear message: All our fashionable politics and right-side-of-history rage cannot overcome mortality. Death comes for us all, so you might as well enjoy the time you have left.

Featured In This Story

Latest Reviews

See all

Theater News & discounts

Get the best deals and latest updates on theater and shows by signing up for TheaterMania's newsletter today!